


dirty words and angry words and words we'll never take back

by meritmut



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 19:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For nyxierose, who requested "something from Éponine's perspective inspired by La Roux's "Bulletproof".</p>
            </blockquote>





	dirty words and angry words and words we'll never take back

**i. I’m having fun, don’t put me down**

She’s light-headed and the club is whirling around her as she laughs in Feuilly’s arms - his hands are knotted at the small of her back and her legs are locked tight around his hips and he’s spinning her, faster and faster with each dizzying revolution - but she can still feel Enjolras’ red-hot stare, prickling along the ridges of her spine from where he sits in their booth (alone, of course, guarding it while the rest of them dance and looking faintly murderous about it). He’s seething, and Éponine knows it’s directed at her, but the sour glare on his face only makes her dig her heels in and smile wider because damn it, she’s not here to suffer his disapproval. 

They fought yesterday, but she doesn’t want to think about it.

Feuilly takes a hand from her back and throws it out just to prove that he can, holding her against him with only one and grinning when Éponine panics and clasps her own hands around his neck to keep herself secure. After a moment, reckless and brave and more than a little merry, she lets go again and flings her arms out (nearly whacking some passing stranger who has the foresight to dodge) spinning and spinning and laughing and out of the corner of her eye she sees Enjolras get up and storm out of the club.

Breathless, Feuilly gradually slows and staggers over to the now-vacant booth: the pair of them collapse in a mess of arms and long hair, chests heaving, and he lifts a hand to push her sweat-damp fringe back from her face.

When he speaks, it’s without judgement or criticism, and she knows it’s meant kindly.

“I think you should speak to him, Ép.”

**ii. Messages I tried to send**

_I’ve tried,_ she nearly says. _I’ve tried dozens of times, do you really think I’d avoid him? Do you think I’d choose things to be this way?_ She loves Enjolras with every inch of her capability to do so, and now she’s certain of it she has no plans to shy from it - she initiated things, way back when, and she’s always been the more courageous of the two in their relationship. But for the past fortnight she has been nothing but scared.

Pushing herself up from Feuilly’s chest, she follows Enjolras from the dark space and hopes the sick feeling in her stomach isn’t prophetic.

By the time she catches up with him, striding up the stairs to the doors as if he’s every intention of going straight home without her, she’s probably as angry as he is. When she reaches his side she doesn’t announce herself - one hand flies out to snag him by the shoulder and jerk him around, shoving him back a few steps with the aggression of the motion. For a split second he actually looks surprised at the sight of his furious… _what even are we? Can I still call him mine?_

“Talk to me,” she spits out, imploring, “don’t fuck around like this.”

His eyes flash and his nostrils flare (she can read his mood in his face as easily as she can from his words most of the time. He’s never lied to her, mainly because he _can’t_ and he knows it) but if Enjolras notices her wince involuntarily at the anger that radiates from him, he gives no sign.

“I’m not the one fucking around,” he snarls, “where’ve you been, Éponine? You were gone _ten days.”_

_Ten days without a word. Ten days of nothing but anxiety on his part._

“I had things to sort out,” she defends herself, fists clenched at her sides. “I tried to tell you. I tried time and time again but you had your fucking rally to organise and no time for anyone else.”

“That’s not tr-“

“Is it not?” she cuts him off with a scowl, “when have I _ever_ not told you something important?”

She has him there. For the first few months (before she learned to trust him) Éponine had been reticent to the point of curtness around him and he’d wondered how this could possibly be the same sweet, friendly girl Marius would talk about before he introduced her to the group. A while down the line and there was no doubt about it: most of the time it’s nigh impossible to get her to shut up.

The day before she left, twelve days ago now, she’d fallen silent.

That should have been his clue.

 **iii. Dirty words come out to play when you are hurt**

“You didn’t call,” he offers into the quiet that swells between them, filling a space he’s only now realising has pushed the two of them apart. He wants to reach out and bring her back where he can feel her chilly little heart beating hummingbird-wing tattoos against his chest, but he’s not sure she won’t flinch away from him if he tries. “You didn’t text, nothing. I didn’t know what to think - I thought you’d gone back to Montfermeil or something.” 

“Why? Because of one phone call?”

He hates the scorn in her eyes, the hardened refusal to concede that anything of her old life remains in the new.

“Your mother-“

“Is gone. I wasn’t in Montfermeil. I wouldn’t go running back someplace for something that isn’t there anymore.”

_Wouldn’t you?_

He’s standing on the edge, and it’s the memory of waking to find her gone - without a word, without a note, and the spiteful edge to her laughter tonight as she dances with other people and spares him barely a look after ten days - that pushes him over. He and Éponine have burned to fiercely and too brilliantly together; Enjolras has hoped sometimes that they’ll last forever, that this means as much to her as it does to him, but perhaps they were always destined to end up coming apart at the seams and able to do nothing about it but watch.

“Then why’d you come back here?”

Over the edge, over and into the hollow darkness of her stare as she takes an unconscious step back from him and the airless space between them turns cold. Enjolras couldn’t cross the distance now if he tried.

Her gaze hardens, her eyes pinpricks of oil-slick shadow in the amber-tinged glow of the street, lightless vacuum-eyes, eyes like every bad dream he’s ever had, and just like that she’s gone from him.

He’s done it this time.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. Maybe her lip trembles, but she won’t cry in front of him. Not anymore. That’s Grantaire’s domain now, he realises, as it was before all this.

It’s no longer his place to comfort Éponine.

How easily it ends. The easiest thing in the world: slipping through his fingers like the rainfall he never saw coming.

 **iv. Now I’m much too proud**

“What’d he do to get you back here?” Courfeyrac mocks gently, offering the seat beside him to Éponine while simultaneously nudging Grantaire with his elbow. She only smiles, but her eyes flick almost imperceptibly over to Enjolras - and even that fleeting glance feels like an indulgence, when he sits there so relaxed and so calm and her own skin is afire with wave upon wave of a fear she’s never felt before. 

She’s never played this role, the uncomfortable ex, and she has no intention of starting now. She went out of her way to reject it and refused to make their separation a war between friends; refused to allow the boys to choose sides and simply walked away. It was easier for her to abandon the Musain than it would’ve been for him.

The last four years have been filled with upheaval on every level of her life and she hasn’t been back here in all that time: the Corinthe has become her haunt, favoured by Grantaire anyway because the bartenders aren’t as familiar with him as ‘Chetta is so they tend to forget his misdemeanours. She sees the _amis_ all the time still, even Enjolras when they’re all together at parties, but their table at the café has always seemed more intimate. His domain, not hers.

Little about the Musain has changed. Feuilly’s graffiti’d declaration of _“vivent les peuples!”_ on the wall remains, scrawled below the ornate fan he’d made for Musichetta’s birthday. The bonny rope of tricolour rosettes hangs over the mirror above the boys’ customary table - she’d helped them make it one afternoon when they were feeling particularly patriotic. She remembers tangling Courfeyrac up in it, and he’d gone over to where Enjolras sat and put on a show of unwrapping it from his body like a striptease, sniggering all the while at the slow rise of a scarlet blush across the other’s cheeks. She’d resolved to inspire the same effect in him later that night, she recalls with a faint smile.

Even Joly’s in the same seat as always. Éponine looks about her and the memories are as clear as the evening light, helped by the fact that Musichetta never redecorates or rearranges the place.

No, things haven’t changed. It’s only her.

But she keeps her smile in place (it’s not hard, Bahorel is telling her about how Laigle tripped up the stairs and chipped a tooth a few days ago and even Bossuet himself is grinning at the story because the last time he’d done that, he’d broken his nose, so clearly the evil genius is feeling generous) and she doesn’t avoid looking at Enjolras. She even gives a little smile just for him when their eyes meet, because she is proud and she misses him and while she’s not one for heaping blame on herself, everything that happened between them was, really, her fault.

It’s why she’s here tonight: to tell him everything.

Four years have lent her perspective.

She loves him still, she needs him to know the truth, nothing more.

The years have given her armour too.

 **v. I’ll never let you sweep me off my feet**

It was Éponine that pursued him, when they first started going together. She hadn’t wanted love, only to test herself and in a way, use him - use Enjolras with his ferocity and his somewhat humourless nature to slice away the bonds that held her to Marius. That was her goal, when she found him mid-brood in the kitchen at one of Courf’s flat parties (he’s always denied that he broods, he’s not _broody_ , but in a group of daydreamers and philosophers Éponine has learned to tell the difference between contemplation and a plain old brown study). She was brave on liquor and breathtaking in her fearlessness, and it took no more than her fingers running lightly through his curly hair for Enjolras to snatch up her hands, rise from his chair and push her back against a wall to remove Marius from her thoughts in a manner more akin to scorching than severing. How she hummed into his mouth upon learning that this creature of political fervour, so intense and devoted to the elevation and liberation of man, is no less impassioned when something more physical required his _devotions._

Devoted or no she never wanted to fall for him, and it was the terror that she might actually be doing so that drove her to flee and hole up at Grantaire’s for ten days to try and figure it out.

**vi. This time I’ll be bulletproof**

“I wasn’t in Montfermeil,” he turns to the sound of her, voice a soft rasp and so much missed. For years she kept her promise to stay away, to never give him the chance to ask again why she’s there because obviously she could never love him enough to linger on his account, but tonight she just…wanders in with Jehan and Grantaire as if she hasn’t avoided the place all this time, and Enjolras has found himself wishing, with every fibre of his being, that he hadn’t been so caught up in planning that one damn rally. 

“I…I know,” he watches her walk toward him, hair stained bloody in the sunset, and words fail him. _I know, I know, Grantaire told me…_

“I was with R,” she continues, “for ten days. Hiding. I was a fucking coward.”

He shakes his head but she’s finding her feet now, explanations four years overdue spilling from her lips and filling the air between them - that space that somehow seems more malleable than he remembers. It would be so easy to reach out…

“Yes, I was, I was…”

Her words wash away the poison that lingers in her bones and she holds her head higher with every breath because at last the lie is done. Not even a lie, a gross omission - a betrayal, because he never deserved it and it’s too late to make amends.

No, she was never in Montfermeil. She hadn’t even left the city. Éponine hadn’t gone back to Montparnasse or her father or any of the shadow-men from Before, and she wasn’t sulking because Enjolras hadn’t been paying attention to her, so consumed was he by his activist work. She had been, quite simply, hiding. Hiding from him because she was in love with him and she knew (feared) that they were drifting apart, keeping different hours and talking less and fighting more, and hating herself for running because he’d called Grantaire half a dozen times in the first two days and she had to listen while her best friend lied for her; protected her from her own stupidity and responded to Enjolras’ demands with vagueness - until she realised on the fourth day that he must only have accepted the painter’s hedging because he was so distracted by worry for her.

The image of him fretting over her nearly sent her running back to him, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. It wasn’t the first time she had disappeared on her friends (she has a habit of it, in fact) but it was the first time she’d gone without warning. _I tried to tell him_ , she’d repeated to herself over and over again, for all the good it did. She’d fucked off and left him for nearly two weeks, there was no justifying that.

She’d spent most of the time alone with her thoughts on Grantaire’s couch, filtering and arguing with herself because with her romantic history in mind she doesn’t much trust her own feelings anymore. It didn’t take her ten days to realise that she was inescapably in love with Enjolras, but she’d already known at that point that he would never feel the same way and there was a high enough chance that their relationship was on its last legs anyway, so that night she and Grantaire drank themselves into a stupor and it most definitely _did_ take her that long to recover from the hangover.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathes, crossing toward him, “I’m so, so sorry I didn’t leave a note, or answer the phone. I’m sorry I was a dick at the club, and I’m sorry I let us fall apart. I…I loved you, and I needed you to know, but when I got back we fought and then again at the club and then it didn’t matter because you-” she gives a hiccuping sob and presses a hand to her side as if it pains her, “-you asked me why I’d even come back and what was the point in telling you I loved you when you didn’t think there was anything there - I’m just sorry, that’s all I wanted to say,” she finishes hesitantly, reminding herself that whatever happens, she’s tough enough to get over it.

_Armour, remember?_

“I loved you too,” is all he says, eyes dark with barely-contained sorrow. “You were so quiet in the days before you left -or I thought you were anyway - I thought you were getting ready to leave. And then you did, and when you came back…” he remembers the way she’d strolled in as if she’d only been out to the shops, and he can tell she’s remembering too. “I didn’t feel like much, like I mattered, when you could walk out and not think of me for a fortnight.”

She’s scarcely a foot from him now and her brow crumples at that. “Oh, God, Enjolras, when I was with R I did nothing _but_ think of you. I was tearing my hair out trying to work things through and I know I should’ve done it with you - talked to you, I know that now. But I came home because I knew that I love you. It was just…too late.”

Éponine looks up to find him staring at her.

“Love?” he repeats cautiously, and she realises.

“Yes.” They’re beyond lies now: it doesn’t matter enough to bother lying about. “I love you. I always have. Maybe I always will. I don’t know. I know I see you around a lot but I’ve missed having you with me, I’ve missed waking up beside you or hearing you bitch about me using all the hot water, or - or telling me about the work you had going on, I loved to hear about it…I was as happy with you as I’ve ever been and I regret it a little more every day that I let it go.”

 _What a fucking mess,_ thinks Éponine sadly, stepping back before he can respond. “Not that it does any good,” she adds heavily, “I just needed you to know the truth. Give me one night of selfishness, then we can pretend this never happened.”

She turns to leave, suddenly embarrassed by the real honesty of her confession, but Enjolras’ hand is on her arm and he’s pulling her back gently and looking at her as if he’s discovered an entirely new element in her dark eyes…

“I love you too, Ép,” murmurs he. Words she never thought to hear, never expected. Words she refuses to let drag her down now. “I do. And for everything - I’m sorry too. I…”

Éponine tugs her arm from his grip.

_You will not give me the chance to hurt us again._

One last apology, she won’t kiss the corner of his mouth though she longs to do it, because she knows that if she does she won’t be able to stop herself.

_You will not hurt me._

She reminds herself that she has lived through poverty and hunger and it’s given her steel for skin, that with Enjolras the world was a capricious game of chance and while living in the flames as they did, it was inevitable that they should one day burn. It would only happen again, if she were to succumb.

_This way I can’t hurt you either._

She leaves him there and she walks, because in four years she’s learned to love him without needing him - to put it away and forget and it’s easier this time because the words that festered inside her are spent. He captivated her with his own words, with his eloquence and his convictions, but if she wants someone to talk to about politics she has Combeferre, and if she wants someone to fuck her like she’s the living, breathing personification of everything that inspires him, well…she and Bahorel have always got on, and his ideals are far less lofty.

_Love without need. Where did your heart go, ‘Ponine?_

She is alone when she returns to the flat, but she doesn’t hurt too much, and when she sleeps and wakes and rises in the morning, she does not think of him again.


End file.
